1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to power supplies and, more specifically, the present invention relates DC--DC converters.
2. Background Information
In many situations, it is advantageous to combine two or more smaller power supplies together for driving a load instead of providing a single higher powered power supply. In some cases, a plurality of smaller power supplies may be less expensive than a single larger power supply. In other situations, it is advantageous to distribute power among several power supplies rather than centralize power in a single power supply.
When multiple power supplies are shared, the load is ideally shared approximately equally between each power supply. Roughly equal load sharing assures that one power supply is not over-driven as a result of the inability of another power supply to equally share the load. However, in some situations, such as for example when there are transients on the load, the multiple power supplies are not shared equally in known power supplies. Power supply designers are aware of this problem and consequently design known power supplies to be able to accommodate more than their equal share of the load. As a result, these known power supplies are inefficient since the multiple power supplies are designed to be able to supply more power than required if all of the shared power supplies shared the load equally. Another problem with known shared power supplies is that these power supplies have relatively slow response times to transients on the load. As a result, these known power supplies also suffer from imprecise power output.